"I am concerned that I would wind up assisting goals other than that of keeping the noncombatants out of harms' way if I were to engage in a lengthy strategic discussion."

"So how about you just ask whatever questions would allow you to dispense with the neutrality? War is awful, always, but it's not impossible to decide which outcome is best whenever two groups end up fighting. You could train us, you could use your magic, you could end this instead of just trying to steer innocents clear of it. What would you need to know to convince you that that's worth doing?"

"I would need to know what the story sounds like coming from Fëanor's people."

He sighs. "Maitimo is very good at giving that. I expect you'll find him quite compelling. Then you get away from him and it's like waking up from a dream and you realize that, yes, it seemed right when he was talking, but in fact Fëanor stormed the docks of a civilian harbor and stole their ships and killed their people and words don't actually make that right, and they don't make it better, and anyway he's just saying whatever he thinks will make you act in Fëanor's interest and has never meant a word that comes out of his mouth. Worse than that. He lies with smiles, too."

"I am curious what about the story of my life has led you to believe that I will nod along to any foolishness that is smilingly asserted in my direction."

"He's not foolish. He's good, somewhere very deep down, and trying very hard to reconcile that with a set of loyalties that are deeply and fundamentally incompatible with goodness, and it's hard to see it and not want to help him try, and he knows that and uses it. I don't think you'd be invulnerable."

"Well, your own idea calls for me to interact with him at some point however silver his tongue."

"Right, because it's the only possible way this ends without bloodshed. Worst case, you're seduced, you learn your lesson in a hundred years and I die knowing that I made the decision to ask you to try for strategic and not personal reasons." He smiles. "That's all one can really ask from life, right?"

"I tend to have higher standards than that for my life."

"Just be careful: if you add "save Maitimo" to the shelf where you keep your standards it'll take half your other dreams off with it when it finally gets bloated enough to send the whole thing crashing down."

"What an... interesting metaphor."

"I loved him, if that's not obvious already."

Sigh.

"it makes things difficult because - I really don't think they'd do something like ambush us on the other side. But I didn't think they'd do any of the things they've done."

"You know, I actually hadn't thought of that. Why would you react to learning that you're going to die by committing more atrocities? Or do you mean that they'd figure that since we're doomed to die anyway, it's not really murder?"

"I mean, it seems like it might be more convenient to doom you if you all found yourselves with compelling reasons not to cooperate or peacefully settle your grievances. Not knowing how Valar curses work I cannot say if this may have literally guided anyone's hand to generate such grievances to begin with, but it crossed my mind."

"Oh! Yes, I think almost everyone agrees that Fëanor burned the ships because of the workings of the Doom - there's even a line in it -" he clears his throat - "'To evil end shall all things turn that they begin well; and by treason of kin unto kin, and the fear of treason, shall this come to pass.' So Fëanor feared we'd betray him, and betrayed us, probably at least in part because that's what he'd been told was Doomed to happen. I don't know how directly the Valar can guide our hands, or if it would feel any different than having a really good reason to hate them."

"I don't know either. What a repulsive, immature reaction to a crime, even if it was words alone and not worse."

"It was the first crime in all of history. I think, given enough occasions, they would probably learn."

"Their failure to think the thing through does not come at the cost of pawns on a game board and none of their vulnerable charges can, as I understand it, move out of harm's way! They are unfit for their jobs!"

He laughs. "You sound like someone I used to know. So what are you going to do about it? Challenge them for the job? There are two choices, as I see it: love them, abide by their laws, and try to help them understand us better so they make fewer mistakes. Or else -" he waves a hand in the air. "This. Leave. And trust that now they've washed their hands of us."

"But you could not just leave; they were keeping you prisoner or this entire mess would have gone much less messily."

"They might not have realized that the Ice would literally kill us. They tend to forget we have physical limitations."

Loki makes a disgusted noise.